Materia Medica Malaysiana

Malaysia and S'pore screen Guangdong passengers for SARS

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Malaysia has begun screening airline passengers from China's southern Guangdong province following news of a SARS case there, a report said on Wednesday.
Health Minister Chua Jui Meng said staff had been put on full alert and had begun the screening process and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) preventive measures.

"So far, we have screened more than 440 passengers from Guangdong and all were given clean bills of health," Ramlee Rahmat, director for communicable disease control, was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times newspaper.

There are two flights daily from Guangdong into Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). The health checks began on Monday.

All travellers from Guangdong are required to fill out health declaration cards, Ramlee added.

The SARS virus returned to haunt China for the first time in six months as a health official from Guangdong on Tuesday announced a suspected case in the province had been upgraded to a confirmed case.

SARS triggered a worldwide health crisis after emerging in Guangdong in November last year, causing 774 deaths and more than 8,000 infections, the vast majority in Asia.

The disease spread globally, devastating economies across Asia with travel and tourism sectors losing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, in Singapore, passengers from Guangdong are being subjected to stepped-up fever screening at Singapore's Changi Airport because of the suspected SARS case in the Chinese province, the health ministry said Wednesday.

A ministry spokeswoman said the special checks began on Saturday after China's health ministry announced a 32-year-old man in the southern province of Guangdong was a suspected SARS case.

"It's just a precautionary measure," she told AFP.

Arriving passengers from other countries normally pass in front of high-tech thermal scanners after they enter the terminal building.

Those from Guangdong are also being screened at the aerobridge which connects the plane to the terminal in addition to the normal checks.

"So they are screened twice," the spokeswoman said.

Fever is an initial symptom of SARS.

Feng Shaoming, spokesman for the Guangdong Centre for Disease Control, told AFP on Tuesday that the case was confirmed to be SARS, but the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it needed more time to complete its own diagnosis.

Feng said three experts from the WHO were in Guangdong's provincial capital Guangzhou and were going over the test results.

Singapore has been praised for implementing the toughest measures to contain SARS earlier this year. Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said the city-state is better prepared this time for any recurrence of the epidemic.